Abstract

The cross-sectional study looks at how firms develop superior performance usingtheir internal resources. It is a study based on the resource-based view of the firm.The study looks at firms in the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Industry in UK. It wasinitially planned as a comparative study with firms in the same industry in Zimbabwe.The study argues that for resources to be potential sources of superior performance,managers have to comprehend the strategic concepts that are concerned with theseresources. The study further hypothesises that Comprehension itself is affected byExperience and Functional Expertise/Training & DevelopmentThe data was analysed using SPSS programme (Version 8). The main methods ofanalyses were factor analysis, correlational analysis, moderated regression & subgroupanalyses, and regression analysis. The results suggest that Comprehension,defined as either Knowledge, or Applicability of intangible resources, or Applicabilityof capabilities, contributes to developing superior performance. The results also showthat Experience, and Training & Development contribute to developing superiorperformanceThe results however, did not support the hypothesis that managers with moreexperience had better comprehension of strategic concepts. The results seem tosuggest that Experience has a negative effect on Comprehension. A possibleexplanation to this negative relationship could be that those managers who had beenin the managerial position for many years were not familiar with the RBV concepts,which are relatively new concepts. The results did not also support the hypothesisthat managers who attended more training and development programmes had bettercomprehension of strategic concepts. Instead, the results show that Training &Development has a negative effect on Comprehension. These results suggest thatalthough many managers have on-going management training and developmentprogrammes, these programmes do not seem to improve their comprehension ofstrategic concepts.